


Unbreakable

by Mohini



Series: Sisters [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cissy can’t lie to me, Ted. Unbreakable Vow, remember?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbreakable

                “Are you sure this is safe, Andi?” her husband asked her. Andromeda managed to avoid snapping at him that she didn’t much care if it was or not. She found the last of the things she needed and tossed them into a small bag slung over her shoulder. Five years working as a healer at St. Mungo’s had taught her plenty of skills, but she knew in her heart that the most useful ones were those learned as a child, patching up her sister after their mother’s frequent outbursts of violent temper and their own teenaged misadventures in Muggle London. Those were the skills she was now silently reviewing as she prepared to take Narcissa Malfoy’s hand to be Apparated to who knew where.

                “Cissy can’t lie to me, Ted. Unbreakable Vow, remember?” She struggled to retain a calm tone of voice. Sometimes, she truly hated being married to a Muggle-born. The first thing she had done when Narcissa arrived on her doorstep was to have him bind the pair of them with the Vow. It was painfully obvious that he didn’t know enough about it to realize that the carefully crafted wording had ensured that absolutely no deception was possible. “Now, let Molly know where I’ve gone. If the Order needs a Healer she will need to handle it. I’ll be back when I can.”

                Ted nodded, his lips still set in a thin line. Andromeda reached out to take Narcissa’s hand. The smaller woman moved closer and wrapped both arms around her, whispering her thanks. The crushing darkness of Apparition was upon them in a moment, and when Andromeda could breathe again, she was in a room that she recognized at once. The Black sisters had spent many of their summer days in Malfoy Manor, Lucius being one of their very few approved playmates. The Apparition chamber had not changed in all those years. 

                “Follow me. Lucius managed to get her to a bedroom. I’ve never seen her this bad, ’Dromeda,” Narcissa told her, striding quickly out of the chamber and down the corridor.

                “You said you think she’s using Muggle drugs now?” Andromeda asked. Narcissa nodded.

                “There are pinpricks on her arms, bruises along the veins, sobering potions didn’t do anything, and I tried every sobering charm I know. She’s skin and bones. It’s heroin at the very least. “

                Narcissa stopped at a doorway on the second floor and tapped the knob with her wand. It opened slowly, and the two women hurried in. She forgot for a moment that she was there as a Healer while she fought back tears of horror. Bellatrix looked to be on the edge of death, her lips tinged with blue and her chest far too still. Andromeda shook her head to clear her thoughts and began reciting the necessary incantations. It took quite a while to catalogue the many problems. First and foremost, Bellatrix had enough opiates in her system that had she been a Muggle, her body would have long since shut down. As it stood, she was going to suffer extreme magical fatigue from the efforts her magical core was putting in to keep her breathing.

                “Oh Bella,” Andromeda whispered. She reached out to place a hand on the side of her face, tracing the high cheekbone with her thumb. Bloodshot eyes fluttered open for a moment, and then closed. Andromeda turned to Narcissa.

                “No sobering charm is going to help this. How are your potions supplies? I brought enough counter-potions to get her conscious again, but I’ve never seen a patient with this much in their system still alive.”

                “We only keep the basics. Sobering Draughts and the like. Basic restoratives,” Narcissa replied, her voice steady despite the worried etched on her pretty face.

                “I think I remember you being a decent brewer, Lucius?” Andromeda asked. Lucius nodded. “I will need as much PepperUp as you have supplies for. Send someone into Muggle London for heroin. Rodolophus should know where to find it. If not him, contact Severus. He can find anything. Tell him to get as much as he can lay hands on. He’ll need to confund the brains out of any Muggle dealer he finds, I haven’t enough Muggle money on me to get him far. I don’t know how long she has been using, but cutting an addict off cold is beyond cruelty.”

                Lucius turned and left the room immediately. Andromeda moved her hand down to feel the pulse at Bellatrix’s throat. Barely there, but it was steady. “Cissy, I’m going to need you to help me get some potions in her.”

                Andromeda moved silently onto the bed, pulling an unconscious Bellatrix into a seated position in her lap. She positioned her head against her shoulder and placed a hand on her chest to keep her still. Some things couldn’t be unlearned. Bellatrix had been fond of recreational potions and Muggle drugs even as a young teen, and she had spent many a night coaxing sobering draughts and hangover cures down her throat. Fond wasn’t really the right word. If Andromeda was honest, she knew that Bella had been a certifiable addict by the time she reached her majority.

                Andromeda poured several phials of the counter potion down her, gently massaging her throat to get her to swallow. When the potion began to take effect, Bellatrix opened her eyes and muttered something unintelligible. “I know, Bella, baby, I know,” Andromeda told her, holding Bellatrix’s hand.  As the potion cleared the drugs from her system, Bellatrix began to tremble, her thin body seeming to curl in on itself as she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. Tiny whimpers of pain escaped, but nothing more.

                Knowing that the purgative aspects of the potion would soon follow, Andromeda summoned a house-elf to bring a basin. Moments later, Bellatrix was retching into it. “I love you, Bella,” Andromeda whispered in her ear, trying to provide reassurance. The long night stretched on, with Andromeda forcing potions into Bellatrix as she became increasingly agitated.

                Shortly after dawn, Bellatrix finally opened her eyes fully. Seeing the faces belonging to the hands that had been caring for her all night long, tears began to roll down her face. Andromeda pulled her into her arms and held her close, as her sister cried and cried. When Lucius came back to the room with Severus Snape in tow, Bellatrix was wavering in and out of consciousness. When she was awake, she was vomiting or crying. Asleep, she shook and whimpered.

                Severus knelt beside the bed and removed a hypodermic and a spoon from his robes, alongside several packets of powder. He added water to some of the powder and held the spoon over a hastily conjured flame, drawing up the resultant liquid and handing the hypodermic off to Andromeda. “Bella, baby, I’ve got something to make it better now. Hush now my love, Dromi will make it all better.”

                Bella hissed as the needle slid into her skin, and a moment after Andromeda withdrew it, she turned in her arms, clinging tightly to her and whispering her gratitude. When the drug had spread through her system enough to bring solid relief, Bella pulled away from Andromeda’s arms and stared at her. “Dromi,” she whispered, and her big eyes were filled with tears.

                Andromeda took her into her arms and looked at the others in the room. “Out, all of you. Get out,” she ordered. She would not have witnesses to this. Bella was too far gone to care just now, but the vulnerability was simply not for others to see.

                “You’ve gone too long, my love,” she whispered to the skeletal woman in her arms. “It will hurt, Bella, baby.”

                Bellatrix watched her, nodding her consent. Andromeda began the spell, sending tendrils of magic into her sister, feeling the strands intertwine and become one. Carefully, she wove her own magical energy into the broken places in Bella’s system, repairing what she could. It had been nearly five years since she had last held Bella in her arms, and the damages left behind in those years were staggering. As she worked, she found something that left her shaken. Without disrupting the spell, she carefully entered Bella’s mind, the ease of the Legilimency proof of the depth of their bond.

                It didn’t take long for the explanation to be complete. She held Bella a little closer as she completed the final parts of the magical energy transfer. When she withdrew from the connection, Bella was calm and still against her. “Muggles?” Andromeda asked, her voice quiet and shocked.

                “Would you have had me leave her with Cissa? The Dark Lord would have killed her. A half-blooded baby? I found a nice little family. She’ll be safe with them, well away from our world until she is old enough to fight for herself.”

                “Eleven isn’t that old, you know,” Andromeda said, her voice unsteady. At eleven, they had been long since past the innocence of childhood.

                “It will have to be old enough. I could feel her magic when she was growing inside of me. She’ll be like you, brilliant and strong and lovely.”

                “What happens if someone finds her?” Andromeda asks, and she smiles and shakes her head.

                “You’re not the only one who ever read Mother’s books, Andromeda,” she tells her. “She is safe. Completely.”

                “You could have brought her to me. Ted and I would have raised her as ours. We certainly look enough alike, Bella. What do you suppose it will be like for her when she comes into our world? If she looks anything like you, everyone will know instantly.”

                “She won’t,” Bella says flatly.

                “What do you mean by that?”

                “She won’t look like me. I used _Obscuro Maternis_. No one will know she’s mine.”

                Andromeda tightened her grip on her sister, shuddering at the thought of the spell. The spell was long ago used to hide the reality that many babies in pure blood families were conceived with the family mistress. It fell out of favor many years back, but it was certainly still a powerful option. No wonder she was so utterly drained. To obscure the traits of a witch as powerful as Bellatrix would have taken a tremendous amount of work.

                “Oh Bella,” she said softly.

                “I still need to cast a _Fidelius_ on the family. Meant to come and find you before her birth, but she came early.”

                “Of course, love. Anything you need,” Andromeda says quietly. It is then that she tells her of the family she chose for her infant daughter through a Muggle adoption agency. A pair of tooth healers, Muggle dentists of all things would be raising a child who would probably be showing accidental magic within months. Cissa had begun Summoning her toys well before her first birthday and of the three Black sisters, she was without a doubt the least gifted.

                Andromeda told Bella as much, and the thin woman in her arms shrugged. “Better to frighten them than to risk her in our world. Have you heard of the prophecy? A child is coming with the power to defeat the Dark Lord. He is already searching for it, trying to find out where it will be born and to whom. The child will be killed. I won’t allow her to be destroyed.”

                “I have heard rumors,” Andromeda admitted. She technically hadn’t, but Legilimizing that old idiot Dumbledore had become something of a habit in recent years. He thought his mind impenetrable, and thus Andromeda routinely searched it for news of her sisters.

                “You know where I stand, what he thinks me capable of. I couldn’t risk it. She was born in the wrong month, but she came early, so would have been at the right time had she arrived as scheduled. I’m not a monster, Andi.  I’m not our mother.”

                “We will go in the morning,” Andromeda whispered, brushing a tear from Bella’s face. “She will be safe. Rest now, love. I’ll be right here when you wake.”

                Bella nodded against her, eyes drifting shut as she fell asleep, her breathing slowly evening out to the calm, deep breaths of a proper sleep. Andromeda gently settled her against the pillows and sat beside her, keeping watch over her older sister.


End file.
